Jose Cedano

English 363
CSUF Biology Major
December 3rd, 2020
 
Dear Dr. Bruce,

Coming into this semester I was imagining me walking into a classroom where I would
read articles and be able to write and interpret scientific literature, but during the scientific
writing course, I learned that was not the case, instead I learned what a scientific writer is truly
about, throughout the course many different assignments and projects were assigned, I learned
different ways to analyze readings or writings and interpret it in a way that can be communicated
to a scientific or non-scientific reader. I will demonstrate with documental evidence the
improvement of my writing through the six student learning outcome you have provided. I will
provide five examples of my course work throughout the semester for each student learning
objectives.
The first assignment I would like to talk about is my extended definition assignment, this
assignment demonstrated SLO’s 1,2. Rhetorical Awareness (SLO #1) was learned and required
for this assignment being able to interpret scientific knowledge and present it to the general
public so they could understand the same general information a scientist would. I started with a
great one sentence definition of biotechnology and used examples of current applications of
biotechnology that are familiar in this day to relate the different field of biotechnology. Ethical
Research (SLO #2) and citing was used and documented on a works citied page at the bottom of
the assignment in accordance with APA guidelines. Readers were able to find the sources for my
assignment through appropriate parenthetical citation.
The most of intriguing assignment was the “penguin assignment” this assignment really
had an impact on me because as a researcher I understand the importance of being able to read a
research article and condense it down to a short summary. Organization and focus (SLO#4) was
seen here, working with peers to create a 25 word or less summarization of an article. A majority
of my initial 25 word summary was used in the groups final 25 word summary, showing I clearly
did impactful work of showing the rhetorical writing of the authors in the article.
My “one thing” assignment showed Academic Language and Design (SLO #5). I had
chosen different contents of language throughout my essay, along with different designs of
expression to show emotion of my one thing, we can see where I do this when I state “Being in
lab help brings me back to a natural place that I'm comfortable and familiar with, outside the lab
theirs a pandemic going on, but inside the lab there is no such thing, only motivation and drive to
make scientific discoveries with the experiments in front of you” along with writing with respect
to gender and cultural differences.
Collaboration (SLO #6) was heavily seen in our annotated bibliography group project,
many team meetings and peer review sessions occurred for each team members work on their
part of the group project. A group calendar was created to ensure meetings and collaboration of
improvement on each team members writing occurred weekly.
Analyzing my documents and listing the different SLO’s throughout my assignments, I
have demonstrated I have become better scientific writer. This course taught me what a scientific
writer is and I will implement the teachings through my career as a researcher.